Transcript Slide 1

 Definitions
 Open Source (free tools and free content)
 Searching (is google a verb?)
 Reliability (experts v. crowd)
 Bookmarking and Tagging
 RSS (Really Simple Syndication)
 Copyright and Creative Commons
 A metaphor
 A kind of computing – SaaS
 The new version of the Web
 My current version of Internet Explorer is
IE 7.0.5730.13
 This is referring to significant changes in the way the
internet operates
 Not just a pathway for communication and trading
information
 A workspace
 A data center
 A desktop that is accessible from anywhere
 Tagging is naming and describing
 Tagging is related to meta data – behind the scenes
organization
 Tagging is the “new” folder
 Tagging let’s you put your document in the
equivalent of many folders at one time
Open=Free and Accessible
Source=Code Source
 Who Cares? Microsoft, Google, and Me
 Open Source is not just about showing code. It is a
philosophy that insists that this code must remain
open for others to see, build upon and distribute
without discrimination against persons, groups, or
fields of endeavor.
 Let’s talk about Open Source and Open Content for a
few more minutes
 Who is Microsoft’s biggest competitor?
 The competition is the Cloud.
1. Operating systems - Ubuntu
2. Office packages – Open Office, Google Apps
3. Image manipulation – Gimp
 We have been talking about Open Source
Software. Now let’s talk about Open Content or
Open Education.
 Online Distance Education has led to a
reassessment of access to education and leading
to what has been termed Open Educational
Resources (OER)
 Educause books - http://www.educause.edu
 Online Educational Resources
 Merlot - http://www.merlot.org
 Curriki - http://www.curriki.org
 Connexions - http://cnx.org/
 Wikiversity - http://en.wikiversity.org
 MIT offers 1,800 courses
online. You may access and
enjoy an MIT education for
free. (You don’t get a
degree)
 Try Physics for example:
http://ocw.mit.edu/Ocw
Web/Physics/8-01PhysicsIFall1999/VideoLectures/d
etail/embed11.htm
Nicholas Negroponte’s world shaking idea.
The $100 computer
http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/explore.php
 Find an example of Open Source
 Software
 Services
 Content
Research-Quality Web Searching
Googling
Is this a verb?
• Search Google effectively and precisely
• Know when to use other search engines
and web directories
• Evaluate what you find on the web
• http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com
 Before you search:
“Crawls” pages on the public web
Copies text & images, builds database
 When you search:
Automatically ranks pages in your results
 Word occurrence and location on page
 Popularity - a link to a page is a vote for it
 ~ 200 factors in all!
 Think “full text” = be specific
war of 1812 economic causes vs. history
 Use academic & professional terms
domestic architecture vs. houses
genome society
gets International Mammalian Genome Society
also try combinations with
association, research center, institute,
directory, database
 Specify exact phrases with quotes “”
“tom bates”
“what you're looking for is already inside you”
 Exclude or require a word
proliferation -nuclear
obama +hussein
 Web page title
intitle:hybrid
allintitle:hybrid cars mileage
 Website or domain
site:whitehouse.gov “global warming”
site:edu “global warming”
 File type
filetype:ppt site:edu “global warming”
 Definitions
define:pixel
define:“due diligence”
 Search box (use to modify)
 “Cache”
 “Related pages”
 “Translate this page”
 Search more of the web
Yahoo!
 Get more options
Exalead
Librarians’ Internet Index
InfoMine
Google Custom Search Engines (CSE)
 Go to Google and do a search using some of the
feature described in the last few slides.
http://www.google.com
 Go to the Librarians ‘ Internet Index and do a search
on the same topic.
http://www.lii.org
 Go to Merlot and do another search on the same
topic.
http://www.merlot.org
 Anyone can put up a web page
 Many pages not updated
 No quality control
 most sites not “peer-reviewed”
 less trustworthy than scholarly
publications
 Look at the URL - personal page or site ?
~ or % or users or members
 Domain name appropriate for the content ?
 Restricted: edu, gov, mil, a few country codes (ca)
 Unrestricted: com, org, net, most country codes (us, uk)
 Published by an entity that makes sense ?
 News from its source?
www.nytimes.com
 Advice from valid agency?
www.nih.gov/
www.nimh.nih.gov/
 Can you tell who wrote it ?
 name of page author
 organization, institution, agency you recognize
 Credentials for the subject matter ?
 Look for links to:
“About us” “Philosophy” “Background” “Biography”

Is it recent or current enough ?
 Look for “last updated” date
 Text
 possibly forged ?
 why not a link to published version ?
 Sources
 documented with links, footnotes, etc.?
 do the links work ?
 Evidence of bias
 in text or sources ?
 Search the URL in alexa.com
 Click on “Overview”
 Who links to the site? Who owns the
domain?
 What did the site look like in the past?
(Wayback Machine)
 Which blogs link to it? What do they say?
 Try the URL in Google Blog Search
 See what links are in Google’s “Similar pages”
 Look up the page author in Google
 Was the page put on the web to
 inform ?
 persuade ?
 sell ?
 as a parody or satire ?
 Is it appropriate for your purpose?
 All that said, who do we trust?
 The Encyclopedia Britannica is written by experts
 Wikipedia is written by the crowd.
 Which is
better?
 BBC says Wiki
 What Wiki says
 What others say
 Do one of the following:
 Which one is the real website of the World Trade
Organization?
 World Trade Organization http://www.gatt.org/
 World Trade Organization http://www.wto.org/
 Which one is the real website of the White House
 http://www.whitehouse.gov/
 http://www.whitehousehistory.org/
 Do a search using Google, then Yahoo and compare
the difference.
 We defined tagging earlier. Now let’s look at it a
little further.
Create a free account on delicious
This one is called TrendsandIssues
The Password is trends12
http://delicious.com/tag/poverty
http://delicious.com/tag/ + word you want
to search for
depression
http://delicious.com/tag/poverty/depression
The social aspect of this process is what
gives this the term folksonomy.
 This is the symbol that
identifies a site that can
be tracked using an RSS
reader.
My Google Reader
The creator of an original work owns the rights
automatically. Fair use is permissible
automatically for education, review, satire, or
journalism. (Fair use does not include
redistribution of large quantities of an original
work, especially on the internet.)
 A little primer on copyright issues for the internet
age is available at Creative Commons. Creative
Commons is a non-profit organization working to
assist both philosophically and practically to deal
with the concerns of attribution and media sharing
in today's world.
 Licenses